Tuesday, October 26, 2010

Everyday people confide to us many secrets and tell us not to tell anyone else. Although I have never revealed anyone’s secrets once confided with me, I see and hear many people doing it blatantly and with no embarrassment and shame. Perhaps they do not realize the harm they are doing to their character and the reputation of the person who confided the secret with them. Women are especially “good at keeping secrets.” Confide with a woman and rest assured even her friends and relatives living in far off lands would know it instantly.

The SMSs and e-mails have made this task much easier. What was previously done through slow placed mail system is now possible in real time with this tiny satanic device hidden in every pocket and a purse. Now a secret is no more within the very next minute, but for men and women of character for whom a secret is to be well kept and never to be revealed at any cost.

Charlotte Bronte explains the human heart – the coffer of hidden secrets very beautifully when she says, “The human heart has hidden treasures, in secret kept, in silence sealed; the thoughts, the hopes, the dreams, the pleasures, Whose charms were broken if revealed.”

And how very right is the observation. We in our hearts have many things that haven’t been told or shared. We have hidden dreams that have never been realized, but we continue to keep these for our own pleasure and happiness. And like a magical spell, their charm will be broken if revealed to the world.

But is it really our heart – the coffer of hidden secrets or any other part of our body? I do not from where the heart stepped into the dictionaries as repository of secrets, love, hate and other passions as it is just a piece of ordinary flesh pumping blood round the clock to keep us alive. All recordings and storing of memories, feelings, passions and emotions are in fact kept in some tiny neurons of human brain. But all over the world, it is the heart, that sort of triangular thing that is associated with all things that are in fact the domain of the brain. On Valentine Days and other occasions, we display heart rather than the brain.

May be because heart can be displayed better than not so very beautiful brain that makes it symbolic of our feelings and emotions. And I think no one around the world be willing to replace the heart with brain to be symbolized of our true passions. Therefore, so long as people are happy with their hearts, let it continue to be the coffer of our secrets – but only for some, as mostly people cannot keep it to them and reveal it and feel relaxed, unknowingly or knowingly exploding an A-Bomb for those who get affected by its radiations – may be for a lifetime.